Your Right to Know

A $60 rental application fee and a $149 security deposit for needy veterans are among the first
casualties of a state-ordered shutdown of electronic raffle games operated by veterans posts and
fraternal lodges.

Bill Seagraves, executive director of Veterans of Foreign Wars Ohio Charities, began sending
rejection letters on Thursday to social workers at the Chalmers P. Wylie VA Ambulatory Care Center
in Columbus. The social workers typically found the VFW group willing to pay amounts from a few
dollars to a few hundred dollars for veterans who needed help with rent, deposits, bills and other
expenses.

For now, the cash flow has stopped.

“It is with great sadness that I write to you to advise you we’ll be forced to discontinue
funding for your programs until we are able to further understand the impacts of the General
Assembly’s reluctance to introduce legislation that would clarify the law ... relating to the video
raffle program,” Seagraves wrote.

Attorney General Mike DeWine on Wednesday ordered members of the Ohio Veterans and Fraternal
Charitable Coalition to immediately stop operating what he says are illegal slot machines. DeWine
previously set an Aug. 1 deadline for the organizations to remove the machines, but that deadline
was delayed when legislative leaders told him they planned to enact legislation to somehow legalize
operation of the raffle machines.

While there has been behind-the-scenes discussion on the subject at the Statehouse, no bill has
emerged.

Seagraves said he had to turn down a request for $325 and $448 for first-month’s rent and
security deposits for two “chronically homeless” veterans in the Columbus area. He also turned down
requests for a $60 rental-home application fee and $250 for expenses for two other veterans.

“It breaks my heart to have to say no to people like this,” Seagraves said.

The groups channeled

$5.4 million to vets and charities in the past two years.

There are at least 670 machines in operation across the state. DeWine’s office regulates
electronic and paper gaming at the veterans posts and fraternal lodges under the state’s
charitable-bingo laws.